Building lap steel guitar pdf pdf#

She has always been an influence to me, especially as I first started played seriously, showing me what is possible.Īdmittedly, I have had some struggles with this. I have great respect for Susan Alcorn, who has no doubt suffered these slings and arrows but has emerged from it as a strong, fully developed and unique voice. These things can get in your head if you let them. There will always be comparisons to what it is “supposed” to sound like, how it should be played, etc. Listeners, particularly steel players, have an attachment to the instrument’s past.

No matter how far you stray from tradition, there is something there that either pulls at you or serves as a reminder that it is difficult to move completely beyond it. There is a part of steel playing that one has to get used to, and that is the specter of the past that always seems to hover around you. The ear is the most crucial and invaluable tool we have. Without it, you are missing a big piece of your development as a musician. I highly recommend every musician, not just the lap steel player, to engage in this activity. While studying the playing of the greats has proved invaluable to my development as a steel guitarist, it was through the process of transcribing itself that I was able to see the road maps of the fretboard unfold before my eyes and the deeper task of problem solving to find the best position for certain parts really escalated my level of analysis to a point where I could begin to do it in real time in my own playing. I’ve recently decided to remove all of the tab/video lessons from my site as I plan to revamp my instructional material to reflect a more fully developed and representative approach to lap steel guitar from my personal perspective.

Building lap steel guitar pdf pdf#

Listen below and then scroll down to download tab.ĭownload pdf of Bud’s Bounce tab/notation below. I think I have come a long way as a player since, but I don’t think I have played this one since then.Īnyway, check it out. I suffered through and you can hear that because the pitches are not perfect. When I recorded the track below, I had recently burned my left hand on my lawn mower and had a huge blister, which made the pulling more difficult. It sounds more difficult than it is but it’s important to have the right gauge of strings on your guitar in order to get the pitches right every time. The performance requires a rather cool and mildly difficult string pull of two strings in one–you are pulling string 2 up a whole step and string 3 up a 1/2 step. This is a great tuning and it also works well for 6 string (just leave off the low G# and E). Note: I tried a funky little thing using the V7 and IV7, which is just a little out of tune, but it was a new discovery so I’ll take it!īack in 2011, I did a little arrangement of Bud’s Bounce for non-pedal steel in E9 tuning (E B G# F# D B G# E). This helps to keep the slants a little more in tune. Also, don’t forget to adjust your tuning by flattening the E and A strings ever so slightly. For wider spacing you may need a slightly longer bar. As always, I recommend using a bullet bar, and 3″ is probably a safe length, depending on your string spacing.

These slants span 3 and even 4 frets (as in bar 4). There are some slants that are not really playable unless in the upper range of the instrument, usually fret 7 and above.

I am using a long scale Clinesmith Instruments “Joaquin” model tuned to C13 with an E first string, but only the first 5 strings are used, so this is playable on a 6 string instrument.

The material itself is basic, but the slants are unorthodox (personally, I haven’t seen anyone using these before) and the picking very specific. This is what I would consider to be Intermediate/Advanced, or Ninja Jr. This works really well for emulating the sound of pedal steel.Ĭheck out the video and tab below. By mostly keeping the notes confined to the same strings, we can achieve a continuity that allows smooth transitions and easier picking. This little exercise runs through the major triads of the G major scale using triads built on every degree of the scale, all either I, IV or V-the tonic, subdominant and dominant. I find it helps me best retain when I immediately put the material to use. To practice in an unmusical way by just robotically playing through scales, etc. I like to practice things by making musical exercises out of them.